About Books & Novels

Books and friends cherish us a lot. This blog is a list of books and novels that I have read recently.
Hope you would enjoy the write-ups.

Saturday, June 22, 2013

Akbar – Biography by Laurence Binyon


About Author

Last week, I read AKBAR, a biography of the most celebrated Mughul emperor by Laurence Binyon. This book was published by Rochhouse & Sons and the year of publishing is 1933.

Before reading this book, I was not aware who is Laurence Binyon but when I googled I understood that he was one of the famous poets and writers from the United Kingdom and he penned a famous poem called ‘For the Fallen’ which is an elegy written for the dead soldiers of Great War.

About the Book

“Akbar” is the short and crisp biography of the renowned Mogul emperor Jalal Uddin Muhammఅd Akbar. This book deals with the most important events of Akbar’s life i.e. his birth, upbringing, rise to the power, battles fought, his children and finally the death of him. This book also covers an important aspect i.e. the spiritual and religious sentiments of Akbar.

I must admit that the narrative style of Laurence is quite engaging in terms of its vivid descriptions of the people, locations, situations etc. He has a captivating vocabulary and one can perceive his skillful selection of words while constructing the sentences.

Laurence ability lies in explaining the complex historical accounts whose accuracy is always doubtful. He uses “for and against” method and leaves the decisions to the readers. I loved this strategy as I, as a reader, am at the liberty of understanding Akbar which the facts and figures presented by the author.

Controversial Topics

Each historian (Indian & foreign) have written different versions of Akbar’s life, rule, religious sentiments et al. But what appeared to be controversial topic in Laurence’s Akbar is the predicament of Akbar to take-up Christianity. Laurence gives series of incidents that seem to be happened in Akbar’s life wherein Akbar had shown the signs of his willingness to embrace Christianity but somehow restrained from doing so.

Conclusion

It is a recorded fact that the British authors, especially those who wrote about India during their imperial rule of this country, have invariably shown affliction towards the erstwhile imperialists. This affection is much stronger with Moguls as British have dethroned and replaced them.

It appears to be that the then British administration has felt that if their authors criticize the previous imperial rulers, such writings may have a backlash on British themselves as they too are the imperial rulers of the Indian sub-continent. Hence even in Laurence Binyon’s Akbar, we can find the reminiscence of this “imperialist inclination”.

Nevertheless, I feel that Laurence Binyon’s Akbar can be a good reading for history and biography lovers and also for the academicians as well.

Read Laurence Binyon’s Akbar in Avakaaya.com

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